Page 5 of No Greater Sorrow (Our Lady of Fire #2)

Aleja was about to walk out of the tent when she noticed Violet’s mouth was moving—a small, almost imperceptible motion. “Vi?” Aleja asked, but even though she was close enough to know she’d been heard, Violet’s gaze remained unfocused.

Violet’s legs finally kicked beneath the sheets, and she wiped her eyes. “Fuck, sorry. I was a million miles away there.”

“You were talking.”

“Singing,” Violet corrected. “I’ve had this stupid Paranoid Hour song stuck in my head all day.”

Aleja’s eyes narrowed as she studied Violet’s tired face. There’d been a time before Violet disappeared that Aleja had been sure she could understand her friend’s emotions as easily as she knew her own. But Violet was a better actress than Aleja had given her credit for.

“Things have been pretty fucked up these past few days. We can talk about it if you want,” Aleja said. In truth, she desperately wanted Violet to say yes. Aleja had Garm to speak with, but he was a hellhound, and as much as he would listen while slowly wagging his tail, he couldn’t understand her as Violet could.

“I’m fine,” Violet said. “Honestly. I think the Second went easy on me. The Authority was the worst of it. What was yours like? From what I understand, he isn’t exactly pleased with you or your boyfriend right now. Did he try to… punish you?”

Aleja stopped herself from cringing when Violet referred to Nicolas as her boyfriend . It wasn’t exactly untrue—or at least, it hadn’t been until he revealed he’d lied to her about the bargain. The word felt like both too much and not enough.

“He wanted to make me hurt myself,” Aleja began, unsure of how else to phrase it. But as she continued, the words flowed with ease. Though the Second’s well water must have long since worn off, Violet straightened, her gaze never leaving Aleja’s face. And when Aleja was done, feeling like her hands were still covered in her younger self’s blood, Violet wrapped her arms around Aleja’s shoulders. Violet’s hair smelled sweet, despite the lack of proper baths at the camp.

“You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met. We’re going to get through this. I know it in my bones. What’s the first thing you’re going to do when this is all over?”

When Aleja’s mouth opened in surprise, a bit of Violet’s hair stuck to her lips, tasting of jasmine oil. She understood what Violet was doing. There had to be something on the other side of the Trials, on the other side of potential war. Something that would make it all worthwhile.

“I’m going to go to Italy,” Aleja said.

“Fucking yeah you are,” Violet said. “I get to come, right? Even though I’m going to drink too much wine and flirt with every pretty girl and force you to go outside when I know you want to spend the entire day shuffling around a museum?”

“Of course. Who else is going to carry my snacks? What about you?”

Violet sighed and pulled away. Aleja’s jacket had left a crease on her cheek. “Sleep for forty-eight hours. After that, buy a new camera. Then, I think I’ll go check out the Green Country of the fey. I hear their forests have minds of their own.”

“Only you could think that’s a good thing.”

The healers gave Violet another dose of the pain tonic, and Aleja scrawled a note, in case she woke up. Running an errand with my kind-of ex(?)-husband(?). Please trust the healers. I’ll be back before you know it . Everything is going to be okay.

Nicolas’s tent was at the camp’s center with a pole stuck into the ground before it, bearing the black flag with the red serpent. A few soldiers looked up as she passed; some must have been here long enough to remember her old self. She wondered if her presence disturbed them. Their Lady of Wrath had faced their leader’s punishment, been stripped of her power, and might die before ever seeing a battlefield.

“Hey,” Nicolas said, as she entered. The tent’s interior was warm with his body heat. He’d clearly drawn the charcoal sketches scattered across the table. They included maps, images of Thrones and Authorities with small annotations Aleja was too far away to read, and even a portrait of a Principality wearing an unusual mask with a multitude of wings. The Messenger.

Although Nicolas’s wings were glamoured away, Aleja imagined she could see a faint tremulous outline surrounding him. He wore a set of black pants and an equally dark shirt, with a silver snake brooch pinned to his collar. He very annoyingly looked like some brooding Byronic hero.

“I might be underdressed for the world of the dead,” she said, gesturing at the simple linen pants and tunic left for her in the medical tent that scrunched up awkwardly beneath her leather chest piece. The fabric was scratchy, smelling faintly of herbs and alcohol.

“Nonsense. It’s the latest in wartime couture, I hear.”

“The insects in the Hiding Place are ridiculously bold. I think there’s a moth currently eating my pants.”

“Lucky bastard.”

She bit her lower lip to keep herself from chiding him for flirting. If they were going to be stuck together for the next few hours, it was better to keep things civil. “How do we get to this world of the dead?”

“The same way the Dark Saints travel in and out of the Hiding Place. It’ll be easier to show you than explain,” he said, holding out a hand. Despite the camp’s pervasive dustiness, his black nails were glossy.

“Won’t I have to learn how to do this myself soon?” she asked.

“Yes, but like all Otherlander magic, it’s intuitive. You’ll learn best by experiencing it, just like your fire magic. Even Taddeas could only help you learn to focus and aim, remember?”

“So, when are we?—”

The tent darkened and Aleja felt like someone had kicked her legs out from under her. As with the last few times she’d traveled out of the Hiding Place, there was a moment of disorientation where she couldn’t tell where she was, other than through brushstroke-like streaks of color.

When Nicolas let go of her hand, she found herself in the sort of place she’d only seen in her textbooks, resembling the famous turn-of-the-century art salons. The ceiling was impossibly high, and the room’s walls continued up until fading into blurred shadows. Nearly every inch of wall space was covered in paintings, all of them landscapes. Some were framed with elaborate gold filagree, others in simple black wood that reflected an unknown light source.

“This is the world of the dead?” she asked.

“No. It’s a crossroads. It takes its form from the traveler’s mind—I suspect a combination of yours and mine this time. It hasn’t looked like this since we used to come here together.”

She turned to hide the involuntary flinch at the mention of her last life and examined the paintings to her right. One was of a moss-covered forest with contorted trees and a large ship’s anchor jutting out of the ground. It took a second for her to realize that it was not just so expertly painted that the trees seemed to sway in a light breeze. It was moving .

“Are these worlds?” she asked, the realization dawning.

“Yes. That’s the Green Country of the fey. Look around, and you’ll find one to the human realm as well, but your world is so connected to the Hiding Place that coming here usually isn’t necessary.”

“I didn’t think there’d be so many of them,” she said. A lighthouse on a tall rock, surrounded by a violent ocean. A meadow in which some large beast grazed. She had to crane her neck to look at the paintings higher on the walls and noticed a tall ladder to her left also disappearing into the darkness.

“Many of these worlds are unoccupied,” Nicolas told her. “It was the Second who created the Hiding Place, and he taught the process to some of his students. It’s as incredibly difficult as you might imagine, but a few of them managed it.”

She looked back at him, noticing the distance in his eyes. “The Second is so keen on teaching witches his magic, but he’s saddled the Knowing One and his Dark Saints with endless rules, and what he put me through was… barbaric.”

“I can’t pretend to understand his reasons. But he’s kept us safe for this long.” His hand moved, as if he intended to touch his chest, but then thought the better of it. “Let’s find the Third’s realm. Look for a painting of a wide river bathed in blue light. It’ll be low to the floor.”

Welcoming the distraction, Aleja crouched to search the first row of paintings, but Nicolas spoke again. “I’m sorry for whatever it is you had to go through in your Trial.”

She bit the inside of her cheek, half-wanting to spill her every emotion and half-wanting to shove it back behind the locked door in her mind.

No, it’s fine, really , drawled her inner voice. Happy to take another trauma off your hands .

“He made me kill three versions of myself. The first two were lives I couldn’t remember, but the last… She looked and sounded just like me when I was a kid. She had a shard of glass in place of a heart, and I had to cut it out of her. She ran from me. She fought back. She screamed .”

Nicolas no longer searched the paintings. When Aleja caught his eyes, their silver was the color of a blade. He’d stared this way at James Thomson, at Roland, at anyone who’d tried to hurt her. As if he wanted to kill for her.

“Stop that,” she told him before he could say anything else. “We both knew what I was getting myself into. Besides, we’re trying to stop someone from killing the Second, so there’s no use standing around and looking like you want to beat them to it. By the way, I found the painting.”

Oh, look at you. I believe they call this personal growth , said her voice.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves , she responded.

Nicolas sighed. “Go on, step into it. I’ll be right behind you.”

“Wait, what?”

“Give it a shot. You’ll see.”

Aleja did not know how literally to take this. She lifted a foot, feeling as though she was about to kick her way through the canvas, but her boot met the painting and kept falling. She scrambled to move her other leg in turn, but training with Taddeas had honed her response times. It wasn’t a graceful journey, but at least she didn’t end up flat on her ass.

Nicolas appeared behind her, unruffled. Like the painting, this realm was awash in blue light, but it was neither cold nor gloomy. Instead, it reminded her of a childhood habit from Miami where she’d walk into the ocean and lie down in the shallows. The salt had stung her eyes when she opened them, but she’d liked the way the world changed under a few inches of water. Back then, she’d wondered if this was how death would feel when the Knowing One finally came for her.

Before them was a wide river, just as the painting had shown. A low bridge led to a path bordered by mounds of dirt that were not large enough to be hills. All was silent except for the gurgle of the slow-moving water.

“Are there actual dead people here?” she asked. The stillness was unnerving, even though she hadn’t expected a horde of translucent ghosts in baggy clothes. Not even other witches claimed to know what happened after death.

“I’ve only seen a handful. They’re often the result of magic gone awry. Magicians who accidentally grant themselves immortality without realizing that their bodies will still decay, or those cursed to a similar fate. The Third is a psychopomp, not a jailer.”

Psychopomp. Aleja knew that word from her art history classes—something that guided souls from the world of the living to that of the dead. “I’m not about to run into my great-great-grandfather or anything?”

“It would be a pleasure, at least for me. I have some choice words for him. Let’s look around.”

“I’m guessing the Third doesn’t hang around under a mountain all day,” she said, falling in line after Nicolas as he made for the bridge. Although the air was cold, it wasn’t particularly unpleasant. She was reminded again of sitting beneath the ocean while the sun beat against its surface.

“No. And like I said, he and I aren’t on the best of terms.”

“You might be the Knowing One, but you have got to stop pissing off the few beings in the world more powerful than you. What did you do this time?”

He winced. “I’m not supposed to make bargains with those too close to death. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t made a few exceptions.”

Aleja’s mind shot to her grandmother, high up in the tower, trapped in a perpetual dream. And Jack, Taddeas’s husband, whom Nicolas had spared from death twice. It wasn’t as if she could pretend to be mad at him for that, but Nicolas’s refusal to comply with the Second’s rules seemed like a pattern.

Yet, you still gave up our memories and immortality for him, anyway , her inner voice said.

Shh, let’s have some quiet time now , she responded.

They walked. She was certain they’d crossed the same river at least twice, and the low mounds to either side never varied in height. Aleja was excited every time something new appeared, but that something usually turned out to be the rod of a femur jutting out of the ground or the curve of a skull nestled among high weeds.

“Damn,” Nicolas said, just before Aleja could ask what the hell they were supposed to be looking for. “He must really hold a grudge. The wards are keeping us out.”

“Can’t you message him somehow?”

“It won’t reach him if he’s not interested in being found.”

“Where did you last see him?”

“Your realm. Long ago,” Nicolas said. “He’d fallen in love with a human woman. The Third doesn’t have anyone watching over his shoulder like I do, but you can imagine why that was a terrible idea on his part. I offered to take her to the Hiding Place when she was close to the end. She refused, but I don’t think the Third ever forgot my attempt to help her. It must be the reason he let me take your grandmother, but now that the favor has been repaid, he’s apparently decided he can go back to being annoyed with me.”

“That’s a lot sadder than I expected,” Aleja said, stopping in her tracks. The sky was low and a uniform dark blue like the rest of this desolate country—low hills and a featureless river, repeating again and again as if they had been walking in circles.

“It is,” Nicolas agreed. “Now, come on. Try some fire. We can test the wards.”

“Geez, Knowing One. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so flustered.”

“Repetition annoys me. Go on.”

The flames came so easily. Before her Trial yesterday, she’d needed to concentrate to make her hands erupt with fire, but with one down, she was a step closer to becoming a Dark Saint.

“Very nice,” he said, as she let off a torrent running opposite to the small stream. The fire advanced a few yards before hitting an invisible barrier, causing it to jut upward until the flames dissipated.

“You have magic too, you know?” She sighed. It felt as if the monotony of this place was an enchantment on its own, meant to lull them into a trance. Their surroundings appeared slightly indistinct as if she was viewing them through stained glass.

“It’s not nearly as impressive as yours. But if you insist.”

She had already known that Nicolas could manipulate light and shadow. It was forged within the name some had given him in the human realm. Lucifer. The light-bringer. The Morningstar. But her breath still hitched. What light existed here gathered around Nicolas in a pulsing orb, bright enough to make her squint. Through the glare, he raised his left hand. The light flew toward the wards like a missile, just like her fire had. However, instead of being deflected, it was absorbed. The ward lit up like a spiderweb at the first touch of dawn, and Aleja saw how enormous it was—how delicately translucent, but also impenetrable.